


Shore Leave

by lq_traintracks (lumosed_quill)



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: AU post-GtN, Bring Back The Porn Challenge, Cunnilingus, Dirty Talk, Established Relationship, F/F, Fingerfucking, Perverted Use of Harrow's Talents, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Service Top, Service Top Gideon, Strap-Ons, Topping from the Bottom, Topping from the Bottom Harrow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:42:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26234341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lumosed_quill/pseuds/lq_traintracks
Summary: This isdefinitelysomething they can’t have on the front. Suddenly, Gideon is very happy they’re on this shitty space station, alone, in the anesthetized quiet, getting it on.
Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Comments: 52
Kudos: 333
Collections: Bring Back The Porn Challenge





	Shore Leave

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first GtN fic; go easy on me! I have not read ‘Harrow’ yet either, so forgive me if, that being the case, this gets wonky. I make oblique references to the end of GtN, but this is AU so who knows how they got from there to here, you know? It’s smut! *hand wave, hand wave* Also, I’m not sure who to credit for that morosexual meme, the one where someone in the pairing is exclusively attracted to morons, but I used that here. LOL. 
> 
> Thanks so very much to the mods for running another Bring Back the Porn Challenge! <3

There’s not a lot of room on a space station to fight stuff with a sword. Well, not in the hallways; Gideon’s gouge marks attest to that. 

There’s the training room Harrow built, which works in a pinch. It’s a far cry from being on the front lines, her longsword in one hand, rapier in the other, Harrow throwing bones and raising the dead to raise hell. Nothing like that. The room is sterile but for the bone debris. (Harrow lugged two suitcases full of bones onto their station so she could practise her little heart out, which she has done to exhaustion more often than not.) 

It’s hard to be away from the front for long. The worst is that it’s boring as whale shit. So Gideon bides her time sparring when she can, though the soldiers that come through don’t often match her skill level, and when they do, they’re off to the front almost as quick as they sat down to space gruel. 

What sucks is when they don’t return. 

They’ve lost more than their share. It’s why she and Harrow have been benched for a fortnight. It’s for rest. Because they need it. Because they’re _needed_.

Gideon’s been working with the longsword more recently, though her Lyctor rolls her eyes at it when she sees it come out. 

“Must you, Nav?” Harrowhark likes to say. “I think we all know the exact diameter of your biceps by now.”

Harrow should. She grips them enough. In bed, that is. She rarely touches Gideon out of it. 

“Make me a construct, come on,” Gideon says, out of breath from the last one. There are no other cavaliers or any sort of swordsperson from the Cohort on the station right this second, and she’s dying to actually kill something.

Harrow leans in the door frame, saying nothing.

“In or out, Reverend Daughter.”

She waits a touch, just to fuck with Gideon, and then, lazy as you please, she pushes out of the door and steps inside.

Two knuckle bones tossed on the floor is all she needs, and then she watches from her safe distance while they multiply and expand and form themselves into the monstrosity of bone and tendon Gideon practically salivates to crush.

She proceeds to do just that, though Harrow’s constructs have been getting faster, more devious, even without her over there twitching a hand at it and making it charge from a stand still.

“Oh fuck you,” Gideon pants, dodging the blow of a truly grotesque femur-teeth combo.

It takes her longer than usual, a good ten minutes of raw fighting, through which Harrow watches as though laceratingly bored. This is an act. Gideon loves that she knows this now about Harrow. Can’t have Gideon actually _see_ how bad she’s creaming her knickers right now, can we?

Gideon finishes, slicing neat and hard through its spine near the hideous neck. The ringing sound of her sword echoes through the room.

“Idiot,” Harrow says, wiping a bit of blood-sweat from her nose. “You could have finished it in half the time were you not thrashing that battering ram of a sword around.”

She doesn’t fool Gideon anymore with that rubbish. Turns her on, yes; fools her, no. Because she’s committed those long ago words to memory. Not a soul, living or otherwise, could pry them from her by force or bribery:

_“But for the love of the Emperor, Griddle, you are something else with that sword.”_

She’ll hold that praise like a hilt, and it will never leave her grip.

Gideon turns to Harrow, the sweat rolling down her back. “Sometimes I like it to last.”

And even under Harrow’s face paint, Gideon can spot the blush.

She jumps in the sonic before dinner, putting on a fresh set of Ninth garb, black shirt and trousers, no robe. Space stations aren’t good places to flaunt one’s macabre fashions; there’s no one Harrow deems important enough to terrify at the moment, but she still wears the paint more than half the time.

Mm, fancy gruel tonight. Fresh-faced, short hair still dripping, Gideon inhales the gross stuff. Dessert is some kind of snot that wants to be pudding when it grows up. She eats three servings. 

Harrow is nowhere to be seen, which likely means she’ll have vanished to some lab deep in the bowels of the place, some dark room where she can be creepy and brilliant all alone. Sometimes Gideon wishes she could watch Harrow like Harrow watches her. Grudgingly, she misses the asshole when she socks herself away like this. They’ve gone out to the front dozens of times now. They’ve watched countless others fall to the very thing they, together, destroy. It’s lonely. It’s brutal. It’s… what they do. 

Them. The two of them. If you’d told Gideon a few years ago that she’d come to rely on the very person she hates the most in this universe, she would have laughed you straight out to the snow leek fields. Now… Now, she can’t imagine it being any other way. They’d both be dead ten times over if it were. And once was enough.

Gideon groans as she flings herself onto the sofa. She contemplates making an early night of it, maybe ensconcing herself in her bedroom with her stash of dirty mags. It’ll likely be the middle of the night if not dawn by the time Harrow—

“Griddle.”

Her voice comes soft from the other bedroom, the one she refuses to share with Gideon, no matter how good a fucking Gideon gives her.

Gideon’s ears prick like a dog’s. She’s up off the sofa as though ready for a fight. Shit yeah, she knows that tone of voice. She nearly trips over the coffee table in her haste to make a beeline for Harrow’s room.

Harrow’s laid out on her bed. Her version of négligée is taking off the outer robe, so she’s in a slightly less forbidding get-up than usual. It’s the lack of face paint that advertises her true level of vulnerability, and that’s something Gideon never tires of seeing: the bare, sweet planes of her necro’s dour face. 

“Undress,” says Harrow.

“You first,” counters Gideon.

“Undress me yourself.”

They stare one another down. The stupidity of it doesn’t matter. If there’s something to win, they’ll be as idiotically stubborn as they both wish. Harrow’s got her game face on, but Gideon leans in the doorway, crossing her arms over her chest, and she knows how this makes her biceps bulge a bit. Harrow doesn’t disappoint; her gaze goes predictably where Gideon wants it. She sighs hard, but then her hands—her frail, hesitant hands—go to the hem of her shirt, and Harrow slowly, shyly (because fuck, she’s still shy about it and that always gets Gideon all kinds of wet) lifts it up, wiggling her way out of it and flinging it to the side with a harsh set to her jaw.

She’s got some sort of binding around her breasts, because Emperor forbid she wear something lacy that shows a bit of tit through it. (Not that Gideon has room to criticise; sports bras aren’t exactly high fashion.) But the black material just accentuates all the bared flesh… her slim shoulders, lifted slightly in defence, her ribs and stomach… fuck, Gideon wants to work her way down Harrow’s body with her mouth.

“Now you,” Harrow says.

Gideon smirks and spares no time ripping her shirt off over her head, leaving her in a white tank top and her black trousers, boots still heavy on her feet. She wishes it wouldn’t be completely asinine to ask Harrow to wait a minute while she goes and gets her sunglasses. She’d look so hot like that. But it would be the antithesis of seduction to hold off on fucking in order to secure sexy eyewear for the occasion.

“Now, get your ass in the bed,” Harrow almost growls.

“That’s what _she_ said,” says Gideon, waggling her brows.

“That _is_ what I said. It—” Harrow exhales in frustration, rolling her eyes. “It doesn’t work like that. You’ve messed it up.”

“It works how I say it works.” Gideon toes off her boots, undoing her fly.

“No, it doesn’t.” Harrow’s hand goes over her eyes now, like she simply cannot.

“Pretty sure it does.”

“God, you are so stupid,” Harrow laments, but she starts taking her trousers down as fast as her hands can go. And then, when Gideon just stares, “Merciful Ninth, can’t you take one simple instruction?”

“You haven’t given me one yet.”

“What do you call, ‘get in the fucking bed’?”

“You,” Gideon says, “gagging for it.”

But it comes out all awed and shit, because Harrow’s sort of half crossed her bare legs out of modesty, the dark of her pubic hair peeking out just above the apex of her thighs. The drool that has collected on Gideon’s tongue might actually prevent her from saying anything else intelligent, or otherwise.

“You want an order?” Harrow asks.

“Yes,” Gideon answers.

“Spread my legs.”

And Gideon’s unskeletoned jaw drops. 

“Spread my legs and slip your fingers inside me, Nav.”

Oh fuck. Fuckity fuck fuck fuck.

Gideon approaches the bed, her trousers now hanging from her hips. She neglects to crawl on top of Harrow right away, simply standing by the bed and running her fingers over the warm skin of Harrow’s thigh. Harrow’s breath hitches, and her legs, just barely, part.

You don’t have to yank or haul with Harrow; if you touch her just the right way, she will bloom all on her own. 

Gideon slips her hand to Harrow’s inner thigh, and higher, cupping her first, giving a reassuring massage. Harrow sighs and parts further, her naked face turning away on the pillow. Her jaw works as she swallows.

One finger, the middle one, finds its way inside, sinking into heat and slick. Harrow grasps her pillow in her fists, seeming to fight the desire to spread herself completely open for Gideon.

Gideon stands silently by the bed and finger-fucks her Lyctor slowly, showing so much more patience than she feels. Harrow has proven well worth it. As she works her a little higher into noisy, fidgety breaths that escalate and become tiny moans, Gideon’s heart bursts in her chest at the sight. It’s not the proper emotion. But it’s there nonetheless.

“Touch your tongue to me,” says Harrow.

“Where?” Gideon’s voice is surprisingly steady, though lower than normal.

“You know where.”

“Anyplace that will get me to shut the hell up?”

Harrow looks ready to threaten her with a construct, so Gideon finally adds her weight to the bed and presses her lips to Harrow’s stomach, feeling it flutter under her tongue, her teeth. Having none of that, Harrow takes Gideon by the hair and none too gently guides-slash-pushes her down.

Gideon’s not as sloppy at this as one might presume. In part because Harrow has taught her well what she likes and how she likes it. And also because Harrow always came too fast when she just went for it, so she’s learned to ramp things up at a less ravenous pace.

“Nav Nav Nav Nav _Nav_ ,” Harrow chants, opening her thighs and holding Gideon by the hair, her other hand pushing against the wall over her head like she wants to smother Gideon to death with her creamy little cunt. She probably does, at least sometimes. There would be worse ways to go. There have been.

Gideon finds herself humping the bed in desperation as she eats Harrow out. She hasn’t touched herself yet… probably won’t until Harrow tells her to. If you look up topping from the bottom in the dictionary, there is an unsmiling likeness of Harrow’s face glaring out. She likes it how she likes it. And Gideon likes _her_.

Don’t tell Harrow that.

While Gideon laps at her gently, Harrow starts unbinding her tits.

Oh fuck yeah. Gideon groans against the wet-as-hell pussy in her face. She shoves a hand down her trousers gracelessly, waiting for an invite be damned.

“I have a present for you,” Harrow confides a little breathlessly.

“Your tits? Yes please.”

Finally bared, Gideon gets a bit distracted staring at them. They’re rosy-brown tipped, small enough that they disappear into Gideon’s hands when she palms them. She runs her hands up Harrow’s body and cups their softness, flicking her tongue over Harrow’s clit while she thumbs her nipples in time.

Harrow arches. “ _Nnnno_ , damn it.”

Gideon lifts her mouth, thumbs moving morosely off nipples.

“Fuck, Griddle. Yes but no.”

“Is this some necromantic bullshit? I don’t have enough brain cells for puzzle-solving right at the moment.”

“Do you ever?”

Not fair.

Gideon lays her head on Harrow’s thigh with a huff.

Harrow digs beneath the pillow on the other side of the bed and pulls out…

Gideon blinks. It would have been a… a femur, most likely, to start. But now it’s been transformed, and it’s in the perfect shape of a well-made cock, a sizable phallus with a flared cockhead, all of it smooth and gloriously rendered, sitting in a bed of leather that Gideon surmises pretty quickly to be a harness.

“Oh you are all kinds of surprise kinky, you bitch.”

Harrow blushes.

Gideon takes the dildo from her and admires Harrow’s craftsmanship.

“Put it on.”

Gideon ditches her trousers but leaves on her boxer-briefs and attaches the strap-on over them. Harrow, watching her, _moves_ against the sheets. Liking that very much, Gideon strokes the hard, smooth length and says, “Look who’s all boned up now, sugar.” 

Harrow covers her eyes. “Stop. I won’t let you if you make even one more joke like that.”

Gideon presses her lips together hard on the ten different puns that want to emerge.

“Have you got yourself under control?” asks Harrow, looking through her fingers at her.

Mutely, Gideon nods.

“You know _I_ still control that thing, right?”

Gideon blinks, suddenly serious. “Everything I have is yours to control.”

Harrow scoffs. “For one night perhaps, but I doubt even that much.”

“For whenever you ask.” 

Harrow blinks, disarmed. Her face, for just that moment, shows the pure force of her emotion. Recovering quickly, licking her lips, she says, “Good.” Her eyes go dark as a Ninth tomb. “Then suck on my tits, you fiend.”

Bending down, a supplicant, Gideon takes one in her mouth, at first just the hard little nub, and then practically the whole fleshy part as well. 

“Mmmm,” she hums, sucking on it, moving to the side of it and leaving soft bites there… open-mouthed kisses underneath; she nuzzles Harrow’s flesh, breathes her in... and then she moves to the other and does the same. 

Harrow’s feet sift up and down the bed restlessly. She pushes into Gideon’s mouth and whispers the name Gideon’s heard her whole life: “Griddle. Oh fuck, Griddle, _please_.”

“Tell me how you want me to fuck you,” Gideon says in a voice probably too reverent for either of their comforts. 

“Like this. I want to see your arms holding you up while you do it.”

“Oh, you mean, these arms?” Gideon sits on her haunches and flexes for her.

Harrow hauls up, grabs her by the hair, and pulls her down into a searing kiss.

Merciful Ninth, indeed. There is nothing like Harrowhark Nonagesimus’s kiss. It is devout. It lays waste. Anything left of modesty falls like a cloak. There is nothing more alive than Harrow’s mouth on hers... nothing else at all like Harrow, the bravest, smartest, most badass woman she knows… wanting her.

Somehow a tube of lube gets pressed into her hand, because Harrow’s sneaky like that, and prepared. Gideon lifts her mouth from Harrow’s to smear oil all over her bone-cock before she settles between Harrow’s open legs, finds her entrance, and begins to push. 

“ _Ohhh!_ ” Harrow cries out, her throat arched for Gideon’s mouth. Gideon makes a muffled sound against her soft skin. She works the cock in and out, thrusting a little deeper each time, until she slowly presses all the way into her. It is tight tight motherfucking tight in there.

“You alright?” she checks.

“Fuck me, Gideon.”

When it comes to dinnertime, sleep, and fucking, you don’t have to tell Gideon twice.

She plants her hands on either side of Harrow’s head, and she starts rolling her hips. She tilts her head, watches it go in, Harrow’s soft, pink cunt taking it, her legs trembling. Gideon leans on an elbow and flings one of Harrow’s legs up and around her waist. On a gasp, Harrow takes the hint and secures the other beneath Gideon’s working ass as well. Gideon rides her, and Harrow does the thing that makes Gideon’s heart flip in her chest, every damn time: she reaches up and grasps Gideon’s biceps, staring into her eyes like that connection is the only thing keeping her from getting sucked out an airlock.

Gideon works up a sweat, her thighs aching with strain. It’s not long before she hears it… the catch in the breath, the not-quite mewl, the quivering of her. 

“Are you going to come for me?” Gideon asks, nipping at Harrow’s bottom lip gently, slipping her tongue just barely into her mouth. 

Harrow sighs so beautifully beneath her, her lips parting, but Gideon only drives into her now, leaving her unkissed, her hard breaths filling the air.

“Yes,” Harrow gasps.

Gideon sneaks a hand down and thumbs her clit. Harrow groans loudly now, heedless of any former restraint.

“You know I want you to say it.”

Harrow’s growl turns into something desperate. She whispers it more than anything. “Griddle… _Griddle_.”

“God, I would die for you all over again,” Gideon says.

Harrow breaks apart, her cry a torn thing, half triumph and half death itself. She clutches Gideon’s body, hips working up into the penetration. She doesn’t fall. She shatters. And all the parts of her batter the walls like fists, like a hundred battles raging at once in only her own body. She is Lyctor-powerful when she comes. And she is small underneath Gideon, someone precious, beyond measure in all ways. 

Harrow exhales, a guttered thing. She pants, “On your back,” and Gideon is happy to flip them as one. 

Harrow gets a look in her eye. There’s both a mischief and a deep concentration there, though it’s easy for her. Even drastically difficult things are easy for her now. Gideon feels it start against her pubic bone, the whir of vibration. 

“Holy shit,” she says. Gideon’s cock buzzes to life, and Harrow moves on it, her body rising upright, strong and fluid. She runs her hands up Gideon’s strong stomach, onto her chest, her head dropped back in ecstasy, a rare smile flitting over her lips… her human face, so bright now as she takes her pleasure on Gideon’s body.

“Oh _fuck_ ,” she cries as it happens again. Her naked tits shiver with it, and Gideon pushes herself up enough to take one into her mouth. She sucks on it while Harrow comes hard, grinding herself down on Gideon’s lap, taking Gideon’s head in a sort of embrace, holding it against her shaking body.

“Oh Griddle,” Harrow breathes as it ends and Gideon takes to softly licking at her nipple instead. “You are so so so so good at that. So fucking good at it.”

Rare praise, Gideon shines from it. But then Harrow is pushing her back down to the pillows, slipping off the cock with a sexy gasp that makes Gideon want to flip her onto her hands and knees and take her that way.

Harrow has other ideas, pulling the harness and Gideon’s briefs off her hips, down her legs, discarding it all onto the floor with an indelicate thunk.

And then she’s descending, gaze hard on Gideon’s, and she opens her mouth against Gideon’s cunt and licks her.

“ _Fuuuuuuck_ ,” Gideon wails. And because she’s a porn-reading, dirty-minded dyke who can’t shut up for two minutes, she sighs out, “Mmm, suck my cock, baby,” her hand sinking into Harrow’s hair.

This is _definitely_ something they can’t have on the front. Suddenly, Gideon is very happy they’re on this shitty space station, alone, in the anesthetized quiet, getting it on.

Sometimes Harrow chides her for the filth she spews during sex, but other times she eats it up. Like now. (Ba dum bum, ching!) She moans and goes at Gideon with that talented mouth, finding her ass with a finger and tickling and _oh motherfucking hell_. Gideon grits her teeth and moves on her face, holding her still by the hair until… “Oh blast, oh fuck, oh shit,” with Harrow’s fingertip barely inside, she comes, all the muscles she’s worked today protesting—and she loves it. She bloody loves it. Loves _this_. Loves… everything. Harrowhark Nonagesimus, her Lyctor, her necromancer, the one who saved her life and gave her one, the one she can never get out of her head. Not ever.

“Bitch,” she breathes.

And when Harrow lifts her mouth, there’s a shiny, smug smile.

Gideon uses Harrow’s bathroom and goes through the sonic again. In her tank and underwear she emerges and starts to gather up the rest of her clothes. The light is dim, Harrow now burrowed under her dark sheets, a lump, a small mammal in hibernation. (Which is a significant improvement to Gideon thinking of her as a snake coiled under a rock.)

When Gideon starts for the door, Harrow’s voice stops her. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what, Your Highness?”

A small, frustrated sigh. Then, “Don’t go.”

Gideon turns, bundle of clothes in her arms. Harrow’s eyes peek out at her from the rumple of pillow.

“Sleep here, Griddle.” And even softer. “Sleep with me.” It resembles a plea. Un-bloody-heard-of.

Gideon has two choices here. She can take the piss. Or…

She drops her clothes by the door, walks to the bed, lifting the sheet and crawling in as Harrow makes room for her.

She lies there on her back staring at the ceiling, Harrow breathing soft nearby. It’s fucking weird.

But then, just as her eyes are starting to fall closed without her permission, she feels the dip in the bed, hears the rustle of shifting sheets. Then Harrow’s smaller body presses to her side. Gideon instinctively lifts her arm, allowing her closer, and then drapes it around Harrow’s shoulders, so slight now, so defenseless with almost-sleep. Harrow insinuates her knee between Gideon’s legs. Her hand runs up Gideon’s abs (appreciatively maybe?) and then cups her tit like the secret perv she is.

Gideon smiles.

“Shut it,” Harrow says, forestalling Gideon’s next great joke.

It works. Gideon exhales. She emits no words. She won’t say shit the rest of the night. Not if she can keep this. Have this.

Have her.

“Turn off that loud brain and go to sleep,” Harrow complains.

 _You’re one to talk,_ Gideon thinks, her chest full of it. But she shuts her eyes.


End file.
